Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1233: Baby Powder and Baby Cakes

Episode Date: June 21, 2018

Ben Lindbergh and Jeff Sullivan banter about Steven Brault‘s national-anthem performance, Brandon Morrow‘s ignoble injury, the Kelvin Herrera trade, banana ambivalence, a suspicious baby-powder puff, Vinny Castilla‘s bat-boning, an interleague-play update, Jose Urena‘s control, the New Orleans Baby Cakes and minor-league team names, the senseless Giants-Marlins beanball war, the debut of Jonathan Loaisiga, and a […]

Answer so no one knows what you just said But when you're all alone, you and your head What's the computer say? It's molding now It's Sissy Joe, it's filled it out And you've got angst in your pants You've got angst in your pants. You've got angst in your pants. Hello and welcome to episode 1233 of Effectively Wild,

a baseball podcast from Fangraphs presented by our Patreon supporters. I'm Ben Lindberg of The Ringer, joined by Jeff Sullivan of Fangraphs. Hello! What I learned from this is that pre-recording, as we were getting ready, you rubbed your hands together like, oh boy, oh boy, we get to record a podcast. It's not often we get to do a baseball podcast. It still gets me excited every time. So a few things to discuss. We're going to do emails today. But before we do, our buddy Stephen Brault made his Major League National Anthem debut. What did you think of his rendition? It was good, now I attended a Portland Pickles game on Tuesday night

a team that plays in the Rob Nyer commissioned West Coast League and the National Anthem was sung by someone who was very bad at it so relative to that, especially Stephen Brault, I thought, killed it I would think that it would be difficult to do that in front of your teammates because you kind of wanted you're used to like joking around with

them right and it's hard to take someone seriously when they were singing like with uh with sincerity but he did uh he did a really good job yeah happy one it was pretty earnest but yeah it was good it was uh it was kind of a no frills rendition mean, he didn't take too much time out there. He wasn't one of the singers who just kind of extends every line, kind of got in and got out, and he was in key, and I think it went well. So if the Pirates are looking to save money on future National Anthem singers, which they probably are because it's the Pirates, I'm sure Brault would be willing and would be a good choice, so good for him.

because it's the Pirates, I'm sure Brault would be willing and would be a good choice. So good for him. For the land of the free and the home of the brave. How many times do you think Bronson Arroyo sang the national anthem? Because I'm certain he did it at least once. Yeah, I don't know. Did Barry Zito ever do it? These pitchers who have sidelines as singers and eventually record albums?

Yeah, what about Ben Broussard? He had a thing going like 10 years ago. I wonder how they can announce their retirement. Like, I'm done being a good baseball player. I'm retired and here's the end. Yes. I'm retired and here's the end Yes So one pitcher who will probably not be Singing the national anthem anytime soon Is Cubs closer Brandon Morrow

Who is on the disabled list right now And probably will not be up to anything So strenuous as singing for a crowd Based on how he heard himself here This is in the annals of baseball injuries There are a lot of weird and funny And silly baseball injuries That we all remember and like to recount, but this has to be one of the most relatable injuries a baseball player has ever suffered. I mean, I know there are guys who've gotten hurt sneezing, just undressing at my house, taking my pants off yesterday morning after we got back in at like 3 a.m., just in the closet, got my right leg off, left one, just felt like a spasm in my back.

It's frustrating anytime you can't get out there, especially when you can't go because of something stupid like taking your pants off. you can't go because of something stupid like taking your pants off. Have you ever sustained any sort of back injury, minor, major, or in between? Not really, no. Nothing to complain about or that lingered in any serious way. It could be coming. You're still so young and boyish. A few years ago, it would have been like four years ago maybe, remember like getting a back spasm when I was playing high school baseball and

even at that age it was like, whoa, this is kind of debilitating for like a day. So like four or five years ago, ordinary day, blogging, you know, doing work, pre-podcast so I had more time to blog. And I had a snack. Right at one in the afternoon I had a banana. Haven't decided if I like bananas, but that day I wanted to give it a shot.

So I had a banana. And then I threw the peel away, like you do, and I had a trash can that is not short. Didn't really have to bend over to throw the peel away, but I had to do like a little bit of a crink in my back. Is crink a word? Yeah, crink.

I bent my back a little bit, just the slightest bit, to bend down, step on the thing, open the lid, throw away the banana peel. and it was the worst back pain i have ever felt in my life actually the worst regular pain i have ever felt in my life i uh i collapsed to the ground in front of i hopefully no neighbors were watching through my window and i made my way to the bed where i it took me about 20 minutes to walk to my bedroom and get myself onto the bed just lying prone like-like, thinking, like, I'm just going to, like, rest this one out.

And then after about a half hour of being on the bed, had to go to the bathroom. I thought, oh, no. So it took about 20 more minutes to get out of the bed, stand in position in the bathroom like you do. And what I remember is then waking up in the bathtub having fainted and fallen into it because my back hurt too much oh my goodness yeah but i don't know if that would have required a 10-day disabled list stint because a back spasm still kind of a short-term thing but the i only bring this up to say that it is funny that brandon morrow injured his back enough to be placed on the major league disabled list while undressing but i feel you Brandon been there yeah I've done something worse

doing something worse it's just stupid there's no good way to hurt your back no one gets simply when they hurt their back Brandon Morrow takes his pants off one leg at a time just like the rest of us that's what he does he gets back spasasms. Were you on the blogging disabled list? Did you take a break from blogging? No, I was back at it. I played through the pain. I went to the gym the next day. Also a mistake. Don't do that.

But kept on blogging. Don't remember what I wrote. It was probably not interesting. I agree with you about bananas, by the way. I've consumed many a banana in my day, but I'm never really sure if I liked it or if I want to do it again. Okay, let's talk about this for a minute. Right on that threshold where it's good enough that if I need energy, I will eat a banana. But I rarely seek a banana out or am very happy with the whole experience.

Yeah, I think they're thriving because we grew up in an age where, you know, you would watch cartoons or something in the morning on Saturday. And you would see cereal commercials. And someone would always have, like cut-up banana in the cereal. Just every cereal, even if it was like Cookie Crisp, had bananas in it, which is a terrible combination. And so I grew up at least with the association of bananas with breakfast and bananas with health, and bananas are just placed prominently in every grocery store in America,

and so they're just always there in your face. But the texture is so weird. And I can't figure out that I don't know if I like them when they're ripe. I don't know if I like them when they're not very ripe. I don't know if I like anything about them at all. But I think like one out of every, I don't know, 10 is like redeemable enough to make me think maybe I'm coming around. Yeah, it comes in a convenient

package by fruit standards i would say it's kind of fun to to snap off the end of a banana and unpeel it there's some assembly or disassembly required but it's kind of a satisfying feeling to unpeel it but then again every i don't know three times you unpeel one you get a mushy bottom or top because it's been slammed against something and then it's all gooey and gross, and that kind of takes away from the fun of it. Yeah, they're so fragile. But also, so you're a top snapper, huh? That's your method? Doesn't everyone?

Isn't that the way you do it? You break off where the handle is. It's conveniently placed. Well, there's three options. You can either break off—you can tear off the handle you can gently gently make a cut with a knife if you have a knife convenient just below the handle or you can flip it around and squeeze together the bottom of it and then uh the you might maybe it would be easier to demonstrate with a banana but i don't have one because i didn't buy them at the store i'm like betting 250 with buying bananas at

the store but if you squeeze the bottom of it then then you can unpeel it from uh from there and it's even easier you You have nothing, no separate part that you have to throw away. We recently got a banana hanger in our kitchen so that it looks good when you have a whole bunch of bananas hanging there in the thing that was specifically designed to hang bananas from. It just feels like a very adult thing to do. How many things do you think that you have in your kitchen that are specific to like one kind of produce? Because you can think of like the apple slicer also is very much only for apples. Yeah, I have an egg slicer that comes in handy, but probably not many more.

I know on our wedding registry, we really didn't put too many of those like food specific items on there because that's what everyone does in their wedding, right? It's like some extremely obscure kitchen implement that I never knew existed and that you use once a year or something. So I didn't want to cram up our kitchen with a whole bunch of those. So I don't have a lot. I will say that banana is probably among the more disgusting artificial flavors. So if you're going to have a banana, have a real one because the fake stuff. Strong, strong agree. Yeah. All right.

Well, we agree about bananas. We can move on. Kelvin Herrera got traded. You wrote about it. Is there anything we need to know about this Kelvin Herrera trade from the Royals to the Nationals? You seem to suggest that it was perhaps a bit early. Yeah.

I mean, that's the takeaway. I think he's a good reliever. You seem to suggest that it was perhaps a bit early. Yeah, I mean, that's the takeaway. He's a good reliever. And, you know, whenever you trade for prospects, you don't actually know what they're going to become. And I don't know. I don't know how much more the Royals could have gotten. But I did get immediate feedback from some people who work for teams who were like, this is cheap. And also, why would they do this now? So Ken Rosenthal wrote an article about why would the Royals do this now?

And it seems like he mostly talked to Dayton Moore and Royals people about it, which just provides you with a pretty biased perspective. Not Ken's fault, but of course the Royals are going to defend what they did. But based on people who were observing this within the game, the Royals did not get enough to justify making the move now. royals did not get enough to justify making the move now like if you're if you're going to trade for a player way in advance of the deadline or if you're a team who's going to trade a player way in advance of the deadline the royals obviously knew they were going to trade calvin herrera at some point but if you're going to trade them now when there's not yet a fully active market you have to that price has to reflect the fact that you were skipping the uh the auction process and i don't i don't think that's what happened here now i don't know what kind of difference that makes i don't know what kind of better prospect they might have

been able to get but weird return i don't think they got a a good player in the return kevin hurst kind of uh yeah wasn't it some extremely obscure player that kylie and eric had trouble even finding a report on there were uh there were three and one was uh johanza morel but he's like a 17 year old kid who's barely played professionally so i mean who knows what he's going to he's got his own life story i'm sure he's a charming and talented individual but he's one of those 17 year olds in the dominican summer league nobody knows what he's going to be but they did get two higher level prospects but neither one of them is very good yes one was also named kelvin so there was that coven her is kind of a different picture from what he was in his royals heyday right like he throws a slider a lot now that he didn't throw then or barely through then and yet he also doesn't

really get as many strikeouts anymore or as many grounders but he's still good what exactly is going on with kelvin her yeah he he never really got the strikeouts you'd expect from someone who throws like 99 miles per hour he's he's had the occasional season where he had more than a strikeout in an inning but he's basically become a strike thrower he's a power arm throw strikes with this breaking ball throw strikes with this change up I think I don't remember if this is accurate but I'm just gonna say it's accurate and defend myself by pointing to the post that I wrote I think I looked up that Kelvin Herrera has baseball's highest strike rate on non-fastballs. That sounds right, right?

I don't know if you read the post. I wrote the post and I don't remember it, but that sounds okay. So I think he has the highest strike rate on non-fastballs, which speaks to his changeup and slider or curveball, whatever it is. So that's good. Sean Doolittle has a very high strike rate sean doolittle has a very high strike rate ryan madsen has a very high strike rate brandon kinsler when he's right throw strikes so the nationals are trying to assemble a very strike oriented bullpen and if there's one team who is

very accustomed to making mid-season trades for prominent relievers it is that one yes that's right all right one other thing i wanted to mention. Do you recall, I'm sure you do, last year when we talked about Adam Lind and the gif of him hitting where there was a suspicious puff that was emitted from his backside as he got ready to swing at a pitch or at least got ready to take a pitch? Can I be honest with you? Yeah. It is the only thing that I recall from 2017. Yeah, it was pretty memorable. So there was a whole debate about whether this was a fart or whether it was something else going on. Meg Rowley did a full write-up at Baseball Prospectus.

She was all over it. So follow-up on this topic. Late on Tuesday night or early Wednesday morning, I received a tweet, and so did Meg, and maybe you, I don't know. But we all received a tweet from listener Stuart Matthews, who covers the Angels. And there was another suspicious puff emitted by an Angel this time, and even larger. If you remember what the Lind clip looked like, you had to kind of squint to see it. This time, it is a cloud. So I just sent you a GIF that I made of this play. This was Martin Maldonado hitting on a 1-1 count

and he gets hit by the pitch. He gets drilled and at the same time, there is quite a cloud of something emitted from behind him. I will give you a second to watch this GIF because I assume you haven't yet. Whoa. Yeah. Wow. It's not subtle.

What? But that's so much. I know. There's a lot of whatever it is coming from behind him there. So I had to consult some people who might actually know this time. It was fun to speculate wildly last time, but I had to get to the bottom of this. So you know Nate Fryman, the former major league hitter who recently retired as a player and has now started dabbling in sabermetrics. He's an extremely smart and cerebral player who has now learned to code, and he even wrote a post for Fangraphs recently.

We'll be talking to him on the podcast soon. Anyway, really smart player, so I asked him about farts. That is the first thing that I thought I should ask him about. So I sent Nate Fryman this gif, and he responded to me, that's funny. Some guys go pretty heavy with the baby powder pregame. Sliders and cup can cause some pretty bad chafing. Basically, throw the sliders and the cup on, waltz into the training room, and start pouring front and back. Guys will have these bright white asses in the shower postgame. Does absolutely look like Lind and Maldonado are farting there, but not out of the question that Lind landed kind of heavy on the front foot,

farting there but not out of the question that lind landed kind of heavy on the front foot and the front hip started open which jarred the inevitably caked layers of baby powder loose however he says also possible getting hit by pitch causes a massive fart the lind the lind one looked like a more believable fart this one is too much no one has ever farted this prominently and then this is something i guess we could have asked Dale Scott the other day, maybe when we have him back on. Just be like, hey, you're back there all the time. You ever seen these puffs of white batter? Yeah.

Nate says that maybe Vroom Vroom guy can use this strategically for propulsion. I wanted a second source because that's just good journalism. So I also asked Alex Hassan, the former major league hitter and actually former teammate of Nate Freiman's, who is a former Effectively Wild guest and now works for the Twins, like a lot of former Effectively Wild guests. And he seems to say sort of the same thing.

He says, the big puff is baby powder. This is going to sound ridiculous, but some guys, especially bigger guys with big thighs that rub together when they run, so perhaps Martin Maldonado fits that description. We'll put lots of baby powder in their sliding shorts and jock to help prevent jock itch or just irritation down in that area. Sorry, this is getting gross. When we go out for early batting practice and we have shorts on, some guys you can see their baby powder showing through their shorts.

Basically looks like a big white spot on the back side of their shorts. So I think that's what we have to conclude is happening here. Well, I mean, I think we knew there was likely baby powder. The question is, what is causing the baby powder to become a cloud? What is projecting it into the air through the pants? Through the pants. That's the thing, right? Through multiple layers of pants.

Yeah. I mean, I guess maybe it could be on the outside of your pants to a certain extent if you're just pouring without paying much attention. And then it gets caked on there. And then you get hit by a pitch. And when Maldonado gets hit, he kind of like backs up suddenly. He's making a half-hearted attempt to get out of the way. So I guess if it is caked on there, as as freiman said it could just come out in a cloud i guess that's what's happening here caked on there how much baby powder are these now adam lind you might

recall also now he's a little bit of a bigger boy first base dh he's got some pounds on him but also he wears extremely tight pants yes which would only stand to make it worse, right? It just seems like it's counterintuitive to what he's – I know with like the sliders in the cup underneath, those are already tight to begin with. So maybe it doesn't really matter what the upper layer is doing, but I mean real tight. Yeah. Yeah. Anyway, we're learning a lot about baseball players I think this whole baby powder process was not known to me Until we started investigating this topic

All right, what else? Is there anything else? You did an interleague play update We talked about that recently You looked into the numbers Basically, National League still winning in interleague play For the first time in more than a decade And all the underlying

metrics the run differential the ops differential they support the fact that the national league has actually been better in interleague play thus far but as you note in the post there is still a chance for a comeback victory by the al to extend the streak here because basically there's just been a skewed distribution of the teams that have participated in interleague play this far and since i started writing that the a's now lead the padres 10 to 1 so the american league is coming back but yeah the uh the weighted average winning percentage so far of al teams who have participated in interleague play is 477 that's not good for the national league it's 5-13. That's better. So worse AL teams have played interleague play than National League teams. So the AL has 184, just about to be 183, interleague games to go.

They will need to win 98 of those, assuming the A's win this game against the Padres. AL will need to win 98 of those if they want to finish with a better than 500 interleague record for the 15th consecutive season. So I never know. I write this post every single season i think at some point usually when i'm looking for something quick and i never know if anyone cares i never know if i care but the longer it goes the more interesting it does become just because everyone likes to streak right it doesn't really matter what the streak is it's just it's a streak like unfortunately er Eric Lauer just had his pickoff streak end at five. That was, that would have been a fun one. If that got to 15, I don't know what would have been happening, but no luck. Yeah. All right. Well, in other news, Vinny Castilla, who is now a special assistant to the GM of the Rockies, was caught on camera bat boning. I don't

know whether you saw this, but he is very vigorously bat boning in the Rockies clubhouse with a giant bone. And so now people who hadn't heard our podcast about bat boning are now suddenly discovering bat boning all over the internet. So welcome to the converts to bat boning and welcome to Vinny Castillo, who still looks good. Still looks like he could play probably. He's keeping in shape and bat poning appears to be pretty good exercise judging by how much work he's putting into this it's such a big bone it's a giant bone I guess it would have to be but man I mean I guess if you're Vinny Castillo you've probably I don't know a lot about Vinny Castillo but he seems like the kind of person who if he's going to invest in any bones he would invest in

like the biggest bones on his in his neighborhood you neighborhood. He wants to show off. Look at this mammoth bone that I purchased from the history museum. He was in the majors for a long time. He's got money to spend. He wants to show it off. And then last thing, I got to say, I'm kind of enjoying how the Giants are self-owning with this whole beanball war that they're in with the Marlins right now. So for anyone who hasn't been following this, there is a back and forth here where Louis Brinson had a walk-off hit recently against the Giants, and he was happy about it. And so the Giants were unhappy about how happy Louis Brinson was. And so that started a whole thing. Arguably, it started even before that,

because the Marlins hit Evan Longoria, who broke, what, a finger in tees out for six to eight weeks. And so maybe that started the bad blood. I don't know whether there was any intention to that or whether the Giants thought there was. But anyway, Brinson was celebrating. This was with Hunter Strickland pitching, and Strickland was pitching very poorly. So he was kind of yapping at Brinson was celebrating. This was with Hunter Strickland pitching, and Strickland was pitching very poorly. So he was kind of yapping at Brinson, and then he leaves the game. He does the time honored dumb pitcher thing of punching a door because you're angry about how poorly you were pitching, and he broke his hand. So now his hand is broken, and he's out for quite some time. And then the next day day giant starter Derek Rodriguez

Pudge's son hits Brinson with a first pitch fastball in retaliation I guess for being happy about his hit and then Dan Straley hits Buster Posey which if you're the Giants the last thing in the world you want is for anyone to hit Buster Posey and risk losing him in addition to losing Longoria and Strickland. They're already down two players with broken bones here, and now they're courting disaster by encouraging the other team to fight back by hitting Buster Posey. Fortunately, Posey is okay. And then prior to that game, Mark Melanson went on the radio and said that Brinson was disrespecting the game. There's nothing wrong with being excited and happy, but holding the bat out too long and flipping the bat, then rounding first and continuing to jaw, to me it looked like he was looking right at Strickland. That's just showing a guy up and it's not needed. needed. Anyway, it seems like the Giants are just kind of getting themselves into a deeper and deeper hole here and losing more and more players to injury. I have nothing against the Giants, but I kind of hope that until this silliness with beanball wars ends, it's just like every team

just keeps losing players and defeating themselves. Imagine picking a fight with the Marlins. Now, quietly, where do you think, for you, Hunter Strickland ranks on the list of baseball players, major league baseball players, with whom you would like to spend time the least? Because for me, it's like top five, no question. Oh, yeah. It's way up there. Yeah, I think that's definitely true. He looks like too much of an intense type of red-ass player for me to even be in the same room with him for very long. So yeah, anyway, this is very silly. I think if the Marlins were to lose Louis Brinson, it would not be a very big blow. But if the Giants were to lose any of these players,

it would be, just both because of where the Giants are in the race and because of how good Louis Brinson is relative to these other players. Anyway, if you are dumb enough to get yourself in this situation, you kind of deserve to have punched something and broken your hand. That's just fitting. I was going to make a dumb joke about how, well, you know, of course he was celebrating. He was Louis Brinson's first hit of the season. But, you know, to his credit, he's got his batting average up to 180. Well, it's up is the point. And in the month of June, not counting Wednesday, he's got a 926 OPS. So Louis Brinson finally showing some signs of life. Also, I know this is not very interesting, but there's one thing I noticed.

We've never talked about Jose Ureña because why, you know, would we? But he's a pitcher. He's on the Marlins. He pitches a lot. So one of the things about opening day when the season starts is that I, and I think you also pay attention to, like, everything. Everything is new and fresh and interesting. And in the first half of the first game for the Marlins,

they were playing the Cubs, and this was Jose Ureña's first inning. Home run, walk, hit by pitch, strikeout, ground out, hit by pitch, walk, hit by pitch, ground out. Two walks, three hit by pitches, and a home run. Jose Ureña, kind of wild, I understand. I never thought about him again. I just kind of let that half inning sit in my brain. Jose Ureña has one of the lowest walk rates in baseball.

He, I just assumed from that inning alone, like here's a hard thrower who just has absolutely no idea where the ball is going to go. He walked four in that game. Hasn't since walked more than two in a game. Wow. Which is incredible. So there's something positive going on with jose urania i know i think he's lost or is going to lose on uh on wednesday walked two batters but still if you like me created a first impression of jose urania based on that inning against the cubs

no that is not what he is he's apparently a strike thrower i don't know how or why i will probably never write about him because you also understand how little incentive there is to write like an analytical post about the marlins but at least it's out there jose arrena not too wild yes that is kind of the opposite of harleen garcia whom a lot of people were calling jarlin the marlin even though that's not how you pronounce his name but he started off very impressively and then quickly became a lot less impressive. I believe he is now a New Orleans Baby Cake, which is the Marlins AAA affiliate now. They're the Baby Cakes. And if you haven't looked at their logo, don't.

It's very disturbing. I got my brother a Baby Cakes hat for his birthday. It's a fun... If you struggle to know what to get any uh brothers or sisters or dads or sons just gifts people like hats like baseball fun one just to always get them a new weird minor league hat there are plenty to choose from just yesterday it was a jurassic park day at the portland pickles game portland pickles have a bunch of different merchandise so like even teams at that level have a whole variety of different hats. So, you know,

could have gotten an Eclipse game hat from last year. I think that was a special thing. At times I feel like it's almost manipulative though, right? Because they have these consulting companies that come in to dream up the wackiest names they can think of for these teams and it's all focus grouped and it's basically done so that you will do that,

so that you will buy the hat because ha ha, this minor league team has this silly name and silly logo and it has no connection to the city in any way. And it just feels kind of cold and calculating in a way, but I guess it works. I like it when teams organically have strange names, but this whole thing feels a bit too designed for my taste. Yeah, the baby cakes i i get uh what it's about i get the relationship what confuses me is a king cake is not really a baby cake it's like a cake with a baby so if anything they should be called the cake babies but yeah otherwise yeah this they got it backwards and i don't know why the baby is angry it's jesus it's supposed to be jesus i think in a king cake right i am i don't know i the baby is angry. It's Jesus. It's supposed to be Jesus, I think, in a king cake, right?

I don't know. I'm forgetting what I grew up with here. But let's just pretend it's Jesus while I do a little quick Googling to confirm, see if I'm making a real ass of myself. The cake often has a small plastic baby to represent the baby Jesus inside or underneath. Absolutely. So I don't know why the baby on the Baby Cakes hat is so mad. Maybe Jesus just has a temper, thinks that he's better than minor league baseball, but also shouldn't be affiliated with the Marlins. Yeah, Baby Cake is kind of a creepy concept anyway.

The whole idea sort of disturbs me. All right, Let's do some emails. So we got an email from Spencer. And as some of you will recall, Spencer is the one who originally wrote in claiming that he could discern the sound of strikes, which is something that we asked Dale Scott about the other day. Can you hear strikes? And Dale Scott says no. So Spencer writes in, just finished listening to episode 1232 with Dale Scott. And since he was asked directly about this, I assume that will be the end of the Sounds of Strikes discussion. Nevertheless, I figured I'd send a quick follow-up on how my opinion has reversed since my original email. At the time, I think I was keying into two things, how squarely the ball was caught and the crowd's reaction, which I think was heavily affecting my judgment. When it was first addressed in episode 1217,

Ben suggested doing an experiment to see how well someone could identify pitches by sound. So I took that suggestion and informally tested myself. The results were not good. Over the course of an evening, I watched one to two innings of several different games with the park audio on, trying to mute my computer's audio as quickly as I could after hearing the catch and switching back to the video after to see if I'd made a correct call. My accuracy in identifying pitches correctly was worse than 50%. Particularly, I was often fooled by the sound of pitches that were way out of the zone or on obvious strikes.

Dale Scott identified all of this right away in his response to the question. I thought it highlighted just how knowledgeable umpires really are. With very little context, he identified all of the shortcomings of this theory and explained how it couldn't really work. Thanks again for entertaining this silly theory for so long. And thanks to Spencer for proposing it because it was fun to talk about.

And thanks also for being willing to re-examine your beliefs, which not everyone is willing to do. He actually tested himself and he has changed his mind. So I applaud Spencer for this. I agree. Very few people will go that far. And to Dale Scott's credit and to the credit of all umpires, when you do that, you do that for so many years and years, it's easy to just sit on the outside, see something happen and say, well, all these umpires are incompetent, but they know so much about what they do and what they're supposed to do. They know so much about baseball that you would never even imagine. Umpires just look at the game in a completely different lens.

So Dale Scott, I defer to his expertise on most things, except maybe Jose Ureña. All right. All right. Elliot says, while listening to a Dodgers versus Pirates game on the radio this evening, I came to the irrational dilemma that I couldn't prove the game was actually happening. Being in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, I don't see any live games. So who's to say that the tinfoil hats aren't right and the whole thing is scripted to make money. My question is, if an entire game, play-by-play, color, analysis, commentator stories from being a player, observations of fan hijinks, commercial breaks, other game highlights, etc., were written by a screenwriter, like, say, Aaron Sorkin, would you be able to tell what would tip you off? So if there was some sort of attempt at a hoax here, like a Truman Show scenario, where a game wasn't actually going on but everyone was trying to convince you that a game was going on how would you know that it wasn't actually going on without being there but you're are you you're watching a game well you're listening on the radio

elliot was listening on the radio okay okay i didn't pick that part up yeah so how deep does the hoax go is there a a crowd? That's the question. Yeah. Well, there better be crowd noise. It's kind of like in the old days, I think Vince Scully at times did broadcasts where he wasn't actually there, right? He would get like updates on the play-by-play via telegraph and then he would just read it out and there'd maybe be some fake crowd noise in the background. he would just read it out and there'd maybe be some fake crowd noise in the background. I mean, it's even like there are World Cup broadcasters now who are calling World Cup matches and are not actually at the game. Of course, those matches are actually happening.

But this is something that they used to do. I think maybe Ronald Reagan used to do this on the radio too, call games when he wasn't actually there. So you could stage it in a sense. And that is the question, how deep does it go? Like if you open up at bat on your phone, does it have the play-by-play? If you open up game day on your browser,

are they all in on this? Is everyone trying to put something past you here? I mean, I guess there's no way that you could tell if all of the things that surround a game were still in place. So this reminds me, we have one of our podcast listeners, Jesse Goldberg Strassler. He is the announcer for the Lansing Lugnuts. And when I was in communication with him and just researching his background, the way that you always research the people that you're talking to through email

privately. So what he does, I'll just read an article here from the MidwestLeagueTraveler.com. This is from 2015. Lansing Lugnuts radio broadcaster Jesse Goldberg-Strossler continued one of the Midwest League's most unique traditions Tuesday, calling a game without watching it. The annual event is a nod to baseball's broadcasting's roots, always done on or around the anniversary of the first baseball broadcast. Harold Arlen described the Pirates-Phillies game at Forbes Field for KDKA on August 5th, 1921.

The game is called from an area of the press box without a view of the field, with props and canned crowd noise providing the special effects accompanying the broadcaster's voice. He first did a recreation broadcast as an intern in 2005, and he was forced to do another one as the Windy City Thunderbolts broadcaster in 2008 when a thunderstorm knocked out the internet in the press box. It was an internet-only broadcast, and the only place in the park that still had access was the front office. So Goldberg Strassler and his radio partner moved their equipment there and called the game without watching it. That game turned out to be a no-hitter? Are you serious?

Wow. game without watching it that game turned out to be a no-hitter are you serious wow well anyway so there's more to the uh to the article but that would be that's an example of someone calling a game without watching it which is not the same as making up a game exactly but i mean if they put in two weeks of preparation to just really convince you about this. I don't know what their end game is, since it just requires a lot of time and resources. And also it's the radio. So why? But otherwise, I don't, I mean, they could do a pretty convincing job. I don't know if I would ever get tipped off. No, I don't think so. I mean, it's, we've talked about many times how when there are baseball scenes in a movie or a TV show, almost always there's something wrong. There's something that stands out to someone like us who's seen a lot of baseball as not being authentic.

But those things aren't usually made by actual baseball people and broadcasters. So if those people were to sit down and try to fool me, I'm sure that they could. They could even take a real game that happened at some point. I wouldn't realize that they were just playing out a game that had happened in the past. So I think you could make it convincing. I mean, the problem is that there's MLB TV now, and so anyone could just go and check. I guess you could set it up so that it just said buffering or something And people would probably be like, oh yeah, that's MLB TV It's just not working today because that happens

But other than that, I think you could do it, sure So now if you're listening to baseball on the radio You will always think this from now on That you don't know for sure whether a game is actually happening or not It would be really easy if you just opened up Game Day to call a game after the fact It would be easy for a radio broadcast to do that. Yeah, sure. Radio broadcasts are so low budget.

But if you were really suspicious about this, which there would be no reason. And also, who's paying that close attention to the radio anyway? But I think if there were to be a giveaway, assuming that these people are competent, it would have to be in the pacing. way, assuming that these people are competent, it would have to be in the pacing. If it just seemed like there wasn't enough time or there was too much time between events, then I think you could start to think like something here doesn't quite add up, but that's about it. All right. Question from Ben. Haven't seen a game he's pitched yet this year. In fact, you don't know whether he has pitched a game this year. It could be a hoax, but what is going on with John Gray? He has an XFIP of 3.03, but an ERA of 5.89. I mean, I get pitching in Colorado can be tough, but that can't be it. Where does the discrepancy come from? And yeah, John Gray has a pretty

interesting stat line because last year he seemed to kind of conquer Coors Field to the extent that you can. He was a legitimately good starting pitcher despite being a Rockies starting pitcher and even had an ERA that looked good for a non-Rockies pitcher. And this year his FIP is almost exactly the same as it was last year. His XFIP is lower than it was last year. He's getting more strikeouts. He is pitching pretty well, you would think, except that, yeah, he has an almost 6 ERA right now. Yeah, so I was just looking at this yesterday just by coincidence. And so this is fairly easy. When John Gray is pitched with the bases empty, he's allowed a WOBA of 310.

When there have been people on base, it is 374. As another way of looking at this, wow. it is 374 as another way of looking at this wow john gray's strikeout minus walk rate with the bases empty is an elite 31 with people on base seven percent his strikeout rate is cut in half his walk rate is doubled so when you look at that i assume john gray is someone who pitches out of the stretch and also out of the wind-up you look at that and you figure well here's a guy who is having a world of trouble out of the stretch now interestingly last season no such split nothing at all nothing there he was very good out of the stretch and the windup assuming he uses them both so i don't know if it's like a real mechanical thing but essentially the explanation here is that he has pitched very poorly at the exact wrong times to pitch poorly

with regard to preventing runners from scoring. So I assume that will clean up. I can't imagine this kind of split would continue, but it does remind me. I think maybe we've talked about this before on the podcast, but do you remember talking about Brandon Maurer and his career splits? Yeah, I think so. Great. Well, then maybe I don't need to bring it up again. He is back in the majors this year.

The Royals, they just called him up. Z-E-R-A is over 11. But thankfully, his FIP is also over 11. But just in case, I guess, anyone has forgotten, Brandon Maurer, over his major league career, with the bases empty, has allowed a WOBA of 290. And with the bases not empty, it's 386. Brandon Maurer, not able to pitch with runners on

base yeah that's not good yeah john gray has a 375 babbitt right now that's uh that's not what you want either and uh he also has let's say he has a 61.2 percent strand rate right now. So that is a 61.2% of the base runners. He gets on and up stranded on base and the league average is 73.4%. So that's not good. And that goes hand in hand with what you're talking about with him pitching very poorly when runners on base. So it's probably not something that will continue. It could be something mechanical, but he's still good. I meant to ask you, this is unrelated to that, although it's another Jonathan. So the Yankees have a young pitcher named Jonathan Loizaga. Yes.

And how do you feel about the nickname Johnny Lasagna? Because for me, it's a 9 out of 10. It's pretty good. And he's fine with it, right? He's okay with it because his name is kind of hard to pronounce. So at least according to what I read in Travis Satchick's article where he had an embedded tweet from a writer who said that people call him Lasagna because they can't pronounce his last name. And if he's all right with it, I'm all right with it. I like it. I don't think it's that weird of a name. Also, he's from Nicaragua, not Italy. So in that sense, you could say that it's inappropriate or something, but Johnny Lasagna just rolls right off the tongue.

If I had that as a potential nickname, I would try to slap it on the first player. It barely fit. Right. All right. Chris, Patreon supporter, says, following from your Shohei Otani discussion, what do you think would happen if every pitcher in MLB had to have an MRI on his shoulder and elbow in the preseason, and the results from every scan were made available to all teams, reporters, blockers, and the general public. Well, the players would feel like their rights are being abused, probably. Yes, and they would be right.

Yeah, I mean, they do all get screened. I don't know the extent to which they get screened before and after the season, but a lot of teams will take images to use as baselines for comparison later but that's different that's not making things available to everyone why would you make them available to everyone what is the benefit here open source no i mean i think if this were to happen probably there would be mass panic about every pitcher right because every pitcher has some sort of damage in his shoulder and elbow. At least that's what you hear just from the accumulated strain. Like no one's shoulder elbow looks like a normal human being's if you've been throwing a pitch for some number

of years as every MLB pitcher has. So I think there would be a lot of concern that would be misplaced. I mean, I think you'd get people overreacting to the damage. You'd get all sorts of people becoming amateur MRI readers. You'd be like people with zero expertise trying to figure out what an MRI says, which would be pretty terrible, I think. And I don't know if every team knew about it. I guess it wouldn't really matter for teams, right? Because if you're going to acquire a player, you get access to his medical records and MRIs. And unless you're acquiring a player that was on the pod race or something and has had

falsified medical records, you would have access to this anyway. So that might not change things, but it might change, I don't know, whom you try to acquire or think of as a trade target. Anyway, so that might not change things, but it might change, I don't know, whom you try to acquire or think of as a trade target. Anyway, it would be very bad for everyone involved, I think. There would definitely be like a cottage industry of baseball writers who either have a background of radiology or, I don't know, being an orthopedist, or they just learn a lot about it maybe and they're in the process. know being an orthopedist or they just learn a lot about it maybe and they're in the process and so you'd have a lot more injury related writers but then they would also just be looking for injuries every year which granted when you're dealing with pitchers there are every pitcher is hurt that's probably the best way to think of it every single pitcher who has pitched is pitching or will pitch is injured to some extent but the ones who are pitching now are just injured and functional, but they will probably not be like that for long.

Yeah, let's not do this. Nat says, why can Japanese and Korean teams use names like the LG Twins with uniforms that look quite a bit like the Minnesota Twins and the Yomiuri Giants with uniforms that look quite a bit like the San Francisco Giants? Aren't those names and uniforms trademarked? Although I assume that U.S. trademark law doesn trademarked? Although I assume that U.S. trademark law doesn't reach Asia, I figure that U.S. courts could make life unpleasant enough for the teams, including companies like LG, that they would change the name. Do U.S. teams license the

names to Asian teams? I could not figure out the answer to this question. I tried looking and there have been a lot of copyright claims that MLB has made, even going to like Little League. There have been times where MLB has lodged complaints because a Little League team or some other amateur team had the same name and uniform as a baseball team and they had to change and it became a problem. But I couldn't figure out anything about this. So I asked MLB, I asked MLB spokesman Michael Teevan about this, and he checked with someone and he got back to me and he said, MLB clubs claim trademark rights in their nicknames worldwide. However, the scope of rights

varies based on a variety of factors, including the applicable country's laws and the use made by the MLB clubs and by others. To certain degrees and in certain instances, nicknames can coexist. To answer the listener's question, MLB clubs have not licensed their names to Asian teams. So that answers that. They have not licensed their names. Doesn't necessarily answer how they get away with using those names and uniforms despite not having licensed them. I guess it's just one of those certain degrees in certain instances. So I don't know whether it has to do with the laws of those countries or whether it just has something to do

with maybe MLB thinking it's advantageous to have that relationship there. But for whatever reason, to have that relationship there. But for whatever reason, it is not a licensing arrangement. And now we know. Well, gosh, breaking news. A lawsuit has been filed against the Yomiuri Giants for copyright infringement.

I ratted them out. I'm an arc. This makes me wonder now about when we were talking about the Port Angeles lefties of the West Coast League and they wanted to be the marmots, but they didn't want to get in trouble

with the company, with the outdoor clothing company marmot now i know that's all in the same country so maybe that would have happened but the port angeles marmots would be so small fries compared to the yomi yuri giants or the healthy twins that right i don't know i feel like they probably could have tried it i understand their operating budget is like 17 but nevertheless marmots it would have been more appealing than Lefty's. All right. Do you have a step last? Very quick one. And this was, it's basically stolen from one of our listeners.

I don't know his name, but his Twitter handle is at BravesStats. He tweets us, I think, fairly common. And so we were talking about Max Stacey recently. He is still a rookie. And one thing that struck me as kind of funny and weird about Max Stacey is that he's a rookie, but also he has appeared in the majors for six consecutive seasons. So his rookie eligibility is intact. But even before this year, he was in the majors for six consecutive seasons so his rookie eligibility is intact but even before this year he was in the majors for five years well he posted a screenshot and i also confirmed with a play index search you can look for the players who have the most seasons in which

they still have their rookie eligibility so mac stacy has six has presumably exceeded the rookie threshold now so he will not have a seventh but he is one of my goodness he is one of 35 minus 7 28 28 players who have six seasons of rookie eligibility however there are seven players with seven of them and their names are as follows stuffy stewart stuffy stuffy stewart bob garbark that's a fun one adrian garrett gil reyes jeff kaiser raul chavez and paul hoover paul hoover being the most recently active paul hoover has featured on baseball reference wearing a tampa bay devil rays cap he debuted in the major leagues in the year 2001 and he exceeded his rookie status in the year 2011 so paul hoover came up played for the devil

rays made four played appearances in 2001 was with the devil rays again in 2002 and then he was with the marlins he really could pick them back then 2006 through 2008 with marlins and then the phillies 2009 and 2000 cents so paul hoover the most recent guy with seven years of rookie eligibility raul chavez also a fairly recent player in the major leagues raul chavez he was a catcher i think probably i'm gonna guess most of these guys are catchers raul chavez debuted in 1996 he exceeded his rookie limits in 2004 so that's a while and uh uh what i i think the adrian garrett no that's not the most interesting one bob garbark bob garbark you already know it's the most interesting one because his name is garbark so he debuted in 1934 and he exceeded his rookie status limits in 1945 so that's 11 years bob

garbark last played a whole world war in between while he was a rookie man yeah and he uh he finally got to play fairly regularly in 1945 with the boston red sox and he batted 225 times he was uh well he was just good enough to not play anymore after that so you know i didn't do i didn't read all the saber backgrounds of these players i don't know what there is that's interesting about them but had not occurred to me to check on accumulated years of rookie status. So thank you at BraveStats. I liked that query. Yeah. So no one's gone on to greatness after being a rookie for seven years, it sounds like. It does not look like it. Yeah. Chavez did get into 11 major league seasons, but he also finished with a war of 0.0. So yeah, if you do this, you're basically the prototypical replacement level player, right?

You're the archetype if you're just getting into games but not enough to lose your rookie eligibility for seven years. If you are curious, oh, my goodness. Okay, so we've got a few cases here I did not notice. So a couple guys who have six years of rookie eligibility just like max stacy so we have a rich sauvure south sover richard daniel sovure if he can come on the podcast and correct me that's fine he debuted in 1986 he exceeded his rookie limits in the year 2000 and we have eric bullock i can pronounce his name he debuted in 1985 well he exceeded his rookie years in in 1991 i don't know why that stuck out to me so

let's just focus on rich so sour viewer that's uh the difficult one for me but nevertheless what was that 14 years between debuting and losing rookie status? He did not get any support for Rookie of the Year. According to his baseball reference bullpen page, he holds the record for most clubs pitched for without a win. He had one decision. It was a loss. I've got to look up this loss. 1992, I don't know if this is going to be interesting.

We're just going to do it live. Rich S. got a loss in a game where the royals played the rangers he uh he went two innings he allowed three runs he was pitching in the third through the fifth innings what is he doing luis aquino started the game he went two and a third allowed no runs and then that was it and then in came rich he got the loss his only decision He was replaced in the game by Rusty Meacham And Steve Shifflett So I don't know, at some point I'm just going to end up reading names off baseball reference

The point is 18 season minor league career for him And he finished with a 2.91 ERA In the minors And that's not even just lower minors He had a 2.9 E era so better than his overall minor league era in triple a 14 seasons in triple a with a 2.9 era and somehow he gets 43 innings in the majors over 14 years that seems unjust why did he keep pitching and so okay on the one hand you

could say why did he keep pitching until he was 36 on the other hand when he was 36 he got into 10 major league games so you could say he made it and looking at his looking at his list here not get more of a chance at some point never had to go to the independent leagues it doesn't look like no it was always expecting to see yeah i thought i was gonna see like japan mexico you know who knows where but no he's he was just in triple a that entire time basically like he was in double a in the mid 80s and then after that it was just triple a triple a triple a and pitching well every year and somehow just never really getting the call that is amazing i don't want to get ahead of us here but he appears to be still alive so yes

there's a possibility there at least ask him how his name is pronounced yeah he's actually a long time coach and is now the pitching coach for the kane county cougars all right so i have a somewhat stat blasty response here so this is a question from kyle who says in monday's cardinals at phillies game the phillies have a two-run lead or had a two- Kyle, who says, in Monday's Cardinals at Phillies game, the Phillies have a two-run lead or had a two-run lead with two outs in the bottom of the ninth. The Cardinals had runners at second and third. Victor Arano then struck out Jairo Munoz, who reached first on a wild pitch that also scored Yadier Molina. Fangraphs has this strikeout having a positive win probability added. And that is true, or it's

true at Baseball Reference where I looked at it. This was a 5% increase in win expectancy, this strikeout. Obviously, it's technically not the strikeout itself, but the wild pitch and then reaching base. So Kyle says, this got me thinking, what is the highest win probability added strikeout of all time? So I asked Dan Hirsch, who is, of course, the proprietor of the Baseball Gauge and at this point answers StatBlast questions just about every week. Go check out the Baseball Gauge, people. It's great. So he checked his whole database for the strikeout that produced the most positive value for the team that struck out. So according to win probability added, he says,

the best strikeout of all time in the batting team's favor came on August 29th, 1976. This was the bottom of the ninth inning, two outs, runners on first and second. Ron Reed struck out the Reds' George Foster, but a passed ball by Bob Boone allowed Pete Rose to score from second. The Reds eventually won it in 15 innings. I have that at a 46.2% increase in win probability added. Baseball Reference has it at 47%. So that is the highest WPA strikeout of all time.

It was almost worth half a win, essentially. And then, according to Championship WPA, so Dan has this version of win probability added that is not your odds of winning the game, but your odds of winning the World Series, basically. So according to Championship WPA, the biggest strikeout came in Game one of the 1907 World Series. Bottom of the ninth, two outs, runners on second and third.

Wild Bill Donovan struck out Del Howard. An error by the catcher allowed Harry Steinfeld to score, tying the game. It eventually ended in a tie after 12 innings. That was worth.128 CWPA, so 12.8 percent of a world series win obviously you could say that the strikeout is not the helpful thing it's what happens after the strikeout but the way that the whole win probability accounting system works it's just lumped in together the the better reaching base and the strikeout itself so that's the answer wow i uh i had been curious because earlier this season the mariners recorded a two run strikeout i was not able to easily research other two run

strikeouts this is even better i like this more what was the date the date of the the first one it was august 29th 1976 august 29th 1976 Let me just pull up this game, see what we got going on. So Ron Reed, August 29th. Well, I can tell you that on August 29th, Ron Reed picked up a blown save in the third consecutive game. So Ron Reed blew a save on August 26th. He blew a save on August 28th. Then he blew a save on August 29th in a game that the Phillies ultimately lost.

Now, obviously, this blown save deserves a little bit of an asterisk, but let's see. So we've got Ron Reed, bottom of the ninth, and it's a one-run game. We've got a walk, a stolen base, single, puts runners in the corners, fielder's choice out at home, line out, and then a strikeout past ball, tying run scores from second. So there was already an out at home in the inning and a line out. So like Ron Reed was trying to blow this game, and then he gets the third out, and still that wasn't,

I don't think I've ever, I can't think of a time seeing a runner score from second to base on a strikeout. How the hell past ball was that? Yeah, I don't know. Must have been a distant backstop or something. Final battle of the inning. Johnny Bench fly out deep center field. Ron Reed, just the complete opposite of every result he was supposed to get in that inning.

Yeah, you could say he had hard luck, but really he got lucky before the hard luck. So I think it all evened out in that case. All right. Michael, Patreon supporter, says, at 40 years old, Kevin Cash is the youngest manager in the big leagues. The Rays currently sit at 29 and 35. Well, they don't anymore, but they did when we got this question. And while things aren't quite this dire for them yet, this got me thinking, has any team ever finished a season with fewer wins than their manager's age given that some have managed into old age i feel like it has happened but i'm not sure given the trend of teams hiring younger

managers will this soon be impossible even in a world where the reds exist so the obvious example of this happening, I think, is Connie Mack, who of course was in the game forever, managed until he was 87 years old with the 1950 Philadelphia Athletics. So I immediately went to Connie Mack's page. Connie Mack had a higher age than his team's win total in his last 17 seasons as manager. This was a combination of Connie Mack being very old and his Philadelphia A's being very bad in those days for the most part, but not even. Like his second to last season, they won 81 games the year before that. They won 84 games, but he was 85 at that point. And in his last season season he was 87 And they won 52 games So yeah that happened for a very long time

I'm sure it's happened at other times Well question for you Okay Buck Showalter is 62 Ned Yost is 63 Turning 64 in August Do the Orioles get to 62 wins Or will the Royals get to 63

Because I don't No I don't think so either right This is going to happen The Orioles get to 62 wins or will the Royals get to 63? Because I don't. No, I don't think so either, right? This is going to happen. The Orioles, right now they're what? They have a 282 winning percentage. Oh, no. So that puts them on pace for a 46-win season.

So, yeah, either they have to get a lot better or Buck Showalter has to age in reverse or this is going to happen. They only have to win 42 more games to tie Buck Showalter's age. But over the rest of the season, that still puts them on a 462 winning percentage, which over a full season would be a 75 win base. They're going to trade Manny Machado and everyone good on the baseball team. This is going to happen. I don't know about the Royals, but the Orioles, yeah. Yeah, almost certainly. All right. This is going to happen. I don't know about the Royals, but the Orioles, yeah. season games than the other. Would you expect it to affect their offers? If a player were chasing a seasonal milestone and he was traded from one team to another solely so he could have five extra

games, how would people view his record? By my calculations, there will be regular season games on 182 days this year. If a bad but durable player, think Alcides Escobar, wanted this to be his legacy, similar to guys playing all nine positions in a game, and he could convince teams to trade him among themselves, would the league ever step in and deny one of his trades? So maybe you've been researching this already, but... I can tell you my favorite part of this. Okay, go ahead. I'll just say, so when you search for this on Baseball Reference, which is I'm sure what you're doing too, you see a lot of bold ink, means the league leader. So there have been five players in

baseball history who have played in 164 games in a season. Six, right? Six players, I think. Well, yeah. So five specifically, 164. Ah, yes. Okay. Jose Pagan in 1962 got into 164 games. And in that season, he did not lead the league in games in which he appeared because of the name that you will say. Yes, Maury Wills is the all-time record holder for games played in a single season. He played 165 games that same season, 1962. Then it was Frank Tavares, 164 in 1979, Cesar Tovar with 164 in 1967, and Ron Santo and Billy Williams for the 1965 Cubs, both of them. So I think there is an explanation other than a trade for almost all of these. And Andrew, our Patreon supporter, was doing some research on this himself.

So the Dodgers and the Giants played a three-game tie breaker to decide the pennant in 1962. So that's how Maury Wills and Jose Pagan made this list in the same year. They were both playing each other in those tiebreaker games. So that's that. Then the Cubs played 164 games in 1965 because they had two games that were called due to darkness, including the first game of the year, which lasted over four hours for 11 innings. The Twins played 164 games in 1967 because they had a one-game tiebreaker and they had a game called due to rain. So I think Frank Tavares is the only one. He's 1979.

Frank Tavares, he's the only one of these who was traded. So he played 11 games for Pittsburgh and 153 games for the only one. He's 1979, Frank Tavares, he's the only one of these who was traded. So he played 11 games for Pittsburgh and 153 games for the Mets, but he also got one extra game with the Mets because they had a game called after 11 innings for dense fog against his former team, the Pirates. So he's the only one. So there hasn't really been anyone who's taken advantage of this scenario of playing many more games by being traded from one team that has played more games to a team that hasn't played as many games. But if you wanted to do it this year, I think the best candidate would be Freddy Galvis, right? Because Freddy Galvis has played in every Padres game. So he's played in 76 games so far.

in every Padres game. So he's played in 76 games so far. If Freddy Galvez were to be traded to the Twins, the Twins through Wednesday have only played 70 games. So they played six fewer games than the Padres because of all of that terrible weather that was just bringing the AL Central to a halt in April. So in theory, Freddy Galvez could still play 168 games this season if he were traded from the Padres to the Twins. And I now hope that that happens. So that would be great. Now the Twins have a shortstop coming back from the suspended list. But also, have you seen, do you know anything about Eduardo Escobar?

Like, have you ever considered Eduardo Escobar in your life? Not at great length. Eduardo Escobar in your life? Not at great length. Eduardo Escobar is slugging 586. Yeah. Eduardo Escobar doesn't stand 5 feet 8 inches. He is one of the twins who had a really good second half last year, right? He improved in the second half of the season. Well, so in the least racist way possible, I do confuse Eduardo Escobar and Eddie Rosario because of the similar first names,

Eduardo and Eddie. Yes. So that's, I mean, that's basically it. I don't watch a whole lot of Twins baseball. I know Eddie Rosario had a big second half last year. However, Eduardo Escobar did not. He had a first half WRC Plus of 97 and a second half WRC Plus of 95. He had a good September. That was about it.

But this little dude, just hitting the crap out of the ball. Eduardo Escobar has a 150 WRC plus. 150. One of the best hitters in baseball. Yeah. He's a utility no one. Sounds like a Jeff Sullivan post. Yeah, but it's the twins. No one's going to click these things. Anyway, if this were to happen, I can't imagine that teams would really conspire to make this happen as much fun as it would be.

I don't know what would be in it for them, really. But I think, yeah, I mean, if someone set a record other than games played, that would obviously be a record. But if someone were chasing some sort of milestone and played 170 games in a season or something, yeah, I think you'd get an asterisk attached to that. If not an actual asterisk, at least people would think you'd get an asterisk attached to that. If not an actual asterisk, at least people would think about it differently because of it. So yeah, I think so. And as for whether one team values another player more, I mean, yeah, to a slight degree, right? If you have five more games left after the trade deadline or something, then the team that is trading the player, then yes, there is a bit more value to

the team that would be acquiring that player. Although not so much because you're probably trading for a guy for the postseason more so than the second half. But if you're in the race and you have more games left, then yeah, there's more value to you by some small degree. Imagine being the baseball player who's traded so often you just never get an off day. Your team is always playing. Yeah, that would be pretty rough probably. they should do it to hunter strickland okay jody says for the past eight years or so i've helped coach my daughter's fast pitch softball team and i've been intrigued with the differences in substitution rules among the various travel leagues we've played in one of the variations they have on a dhstyle position has led me to believe that the following compromise might work for MLB. I've heard a few people propose this idea.

So Jody says, change the rules so that the DH is used in both leagues, but tweak the DH rules slightly so that the player listed as the DH on the lineup card is directly tied to the starting pitcher. In other words, instead of the DH being active for the entire game, make it so that the DH is tied to a specific pitcher so when the pitcher is removed, so is the starting DH. Teams could then use a replacement DH, but they'd have to specify that when making a pitching change, sort of like a double switch. What I like about the idea is that it gives fans who no longer want to see terrible pitchers at the plate what they want, and it also gives those NL fans who say,

but you'd eliminate a lot of the strategy of the game, some alternative strategy to consider. So in practical terms, if a team had a great DH, like, say, David Ortiz back in the day, would the Red Sox feel confident enough about their starting pitcher going deep in the game to start Ortiz as their DH, knowing he might only get one to two at-bats, or would they save Ortiz to use in a higher leverage pinch-hitting role? Would teams with great rotations be willing to splurge on a higher

price DH, while teams with shaky rotations just use a rotation of bench or utility players? And for teams that use an opener to start a game on the mound, whom would you start at DH knowing that the player would get only one at bat? There'd be plenty of strategy to consider in this scenario. Well, let's walk through upsides and downsides uh you've thought about this for longer than i have now this would in a sense incentivize it would help starters throw more innings i think yeah right it would help reverse that trend in a sense which could be a good thing but teams would also build out deeper okay so this would work in a few ways.

You would have starters pitching longer, I think. Starters would pitch longer, which would alleviate some burden on the bullpen, which would serve the dual purpose of opening up another bench slot for another hitter who could take over for the DH when the DH comes out. So you would have more hitters. Maybe you would have less concern

about bringing someone up on the bench who can play defense and more about someone who can hit, like a Calvin Pickeringvin pickering as long as we're just gonna pull references out so starters would be preserved a little bit and you would have deeper benches of bats and is there anything else you've been able to come up with not really i think that's about it it is as jody says it's kind of a compromise i mean i can I can't imagine it happening. I don't think that the DH league, the AL, would go backward toward less DHing. And I think that probably if the NL eventually decides to adopt the DH, they'll just do what has worked in the AL for 45 years. So I don't expect it to happen, but I don't dislike the idea.

It's kind of complex, but in a good way. Yeah, I don't dislike the idea It's kind of complex But in a good way Yeah, I don't hate it either I would like to re-emphasize what you just said This would be the AL going backwards Because the DH is good And pitcher's hitting is stupid I'm on your side here I just want to dilute some of the negative

Intention you might be receiving Although I guess people email both of us So it doesn't really change anything So anyway, never mind, Let's just move on. All right. Yeah. Anyway, it's a pretty good idea. I like it. I think probably people who hate the idea of the DH would be more receptive to this, but it's probably something that will remain in the realm of theory and the abstract. Yeah.

All right. Jacob says, the other day when the two of you briefly mentioned the possibility of trading draft picks I started to think about different things that could happen Assuming GMs could trade draft picks Many years in advance How many consecutive first round picks Would need to be traded in exchange for Mike Trout For the Angels to accept the trade Knowing the average first round draft pick

Is worth about 5 wins above replacement And assuming that Mike Trout is worth about five wins above replacement, and assuming that Mike Trout will accumulate about 25 wins above replacement between now and the end of his contract with the Angels, do you think that about five first round draft picks would cause the Angels to make the trade, or do you think it would need to be closer to 10 or 15 or 20? Also, would the Angels be less likely to do this if they knew they were trading with a team like the Yankees or the Cardinals who were never tanking and would have picks in the back end of the first round as opposed to a team that may give back higher valued picks? Lastly, can we agree that Jerry DePoto would make the trade within hours of this rule being instated? I would imagine that Jerry DePoto is already trying. He's probably

petitioned the league to allow him to trade as many things as he can, probably try to trade his office. So there are a few things here. One, if you were trading my track to a team, that team is probably trying to win, trying to build. So that team is not likely, at least maybe they're very bad at building, but that team is trying to be competitive, which means you will probably be getting picks in the back half of the draft, at least in the shorter term. So that's bad. I think GMs and presidents of baseball operations would be disincentivized to care at all about first-run picks that are like like eight, nine or 10 years off. I don't think that means anything to them. The present value of a first round draft pick in like nine years is basically nil. We could all be dead or alive forever. I

don't know. Science could go either way. So I don't actually think if you had first round picks, I don't think that there's any number that you could trade. If you were just trading first round picks alone, I don't think you could get Mike Trout. I think it's one thing if you were like, I guarantee you I'm trading you the first overall picks. But outside of that, like after the first five or six slots, it's all a crapshoot. So I don't think that you could do it. You could pile on like the next two first round picks with prospects to sweeten the

package. But that's it. Yeah. I mean, Mike Trout's trade value is lower than it used to be because he's only under contract for two more years, and he'll be making $34 million in each of those years. Of course, at the level that he's playing right now, $34 million is an incredible bargain

because he is basically the best player ever right now. So there's that, but a little less surplus value to Mike Trout's remaining years with the Angels or under his current contract than there used to be. But still, yeah, I think I agree with you. If it's just a pick in the back half of the round, it's not usually going to be a real impact player and it's just one a year and it would be a nice boost to your system certainly to have an extra first rounder every year. But I don't know that it's something that a GM would really be incentivized to do because a GM is not going to be around long enough really to reap the rewards of like 20 first round picks in a row or something.

He's going to want the guy who's good now. And the Angels are probably not going to make the playoffs right now but the only chance that they have is keeping my trout so i think probably not worth it all right almost done here let's see i've got this one from alexander what if every team got one mulligan a year it could be used at any time regular season or postseason to erase the previous plate appearance and do it again. Give up a walk-off in an important game? Mulligan. Strike out with the bases loaded? Down one in the ninth? Mulligan. What would be the optimal strategy for using a mulligan?

Would you use it relatively early in the season, in a close game against your best division rival, or keep it in your back pocket for the playoffs? Would it end up being underused, like the manager's challenge, with teams holding on to their mulligan until it's no longer useful. Yeah, you definitely wouldn't use it early in the season unless you're a real dum-dum. That would just be a waste. Because you're looking, I mean, this would be a Dan Hirsch question, right? We're just looking for a championship win probability added at some point. So you definitely keep it late.

Now, of course, there would be teams who uh who drop out of the race and they realize nothing is going to matter for them so they would just use it at some point just for the hell of it but yeah you would have a lot of these i mean especially with teams just fighting for wild card slots a lot of these would be waiting until the toward the end of the season and then you would have teams who are like we're going to chance it we want to keep this into the playoffs when these things would really matter but you would have some teams around the wildcard who would be desperate enough to use it then, but you would be strongly incentivized to save this for the playoffs. Yeah, I think almost everyone would. And if not, I mean, you'd save it until late in the year when you knew what your playoff odds were

and you had some big game in September that you really, really needed to win. So I think it would not go unused most times. I mean, if you just kind of sail through the playoffs, maybe you never really need to use it because you keep saving it for an elimination game or something and you never get there. But otherwise, I think it would usually be used and it would usually be used in the playoffs. So it's probably not all that interesting.

It's an interesting idea, but I don't know that it would vary that much in how or when you would use it. All right. Andrew, different Andrew, but also a Patreon supporter says, How would baseball be different if pitchers didn't know who was batting and just had to pitch based on what's working for them and what the umpire's calling and game theory? Side note, how would Barry Bonds' career have been different in this universe? So I asked Andrew how this is possible, how the pitcher does not know the identity of the batter. And he says, one-way mirror. So batters can see them, but they can't see the batter. Also, the catcher can't see, which seems like a problem. Wait, where is the mirror? That's what I'm wondering. Maybe it's like one of those L screens that you put in front of the mound so that you can still throw,

but you're pretend no. Nope. You can see through the L screen. You can't see through the mirror. No, you need the men in black zappers so you just don't know anything about the hitter. Well, yeah, that, okay. Or what if you have like face blindness and you just can't distinguish between

people and no one tells you? I don't know exactly how this can be feasible, but if somehow the pitcher did not know the identity of the batter and just had to pitch to him, I mean, I guess for some time you could probably just infer who the good hitters are, right? Because if you know where in the batting order you are, unless you can't keep track of that, you know that you're facing like the third or fourth hitter or something. So if you are pitching against the Giants during Barry Bonds' peak and you know that Bonds always hits third or whatever, you know when he's up or you can make a pretty good

guess when he's up. So there's that like you should be able to keep track of when a good hitter is up you might not necessarily know who the specific hitter is at any one time so i guess a there'd be more memorization of what is the typical batting order for this team so there's that and b i guess you'd just be kind of pitching to your strengths which is what most pitchers do anyway right yeah so he's right that barry bonds's career would be very different if pitchers didn't know it was him maybe they would i don't know because this is an impossible universe i don't know if they would like start to figure out that it's barry bonds but outside of that yeah you've

you've got a lot of pitchers who are pitching to those strengths. Do the catchers know? I can't think of any way they wouldn't know, but none of this really makes sense. Well, is that the problem? The catchers also have face blindness? Right.

So, I mean, I think it would, I guess it's basically asking like how effective are scouting reports, right? That's kind of the upshot of the question here is if you just don't know a hitter's weaknesses. And in the past, you probably had less of a sense of hitter's weaknesses than you do today. There was less data. It was more anecdotal or kind of based on observation. based on observation. So I think that for the most part, you talk to pitchers and they'll tell you that they pitch to their strengths and they pitch the pitch that's good for them more so than

the pitch that is bad for the batter. But there's some of that. Certainly, you know that a guy is bad against breaking balls or you pound him inside or whatever. I'm sure there's some value to that. So if you took away advanced scouting and scouting reports from a team for a full season, that may be a question we've answered before, but I would think that would hurt. I don't know exactly how much it would hurt. I think in a way it would actually serve to undo the third time through the order penalty because I think you'd have pitchers and I guess also catchers learning more about the hitters each time they go through because pitchers can read swings.

They can read where batters are. They can read what they're looking for. and you can read like if someone has a big uppercut swing then you can assume well now or maybe next time he's up i'm gonna attack up in the zone so i think that uh you you would have run scoring would be elevated early in the game and then pitchers would learn a little more the next time and then if they got a third trip through the order then they would uh they would have the most knowledge they're going to have now i don't know if any of this carries over game to game if you face the same opponent again and then you know if you're the other team you could always pinch hit and i guess the pitcher wouldn't know who's batting this gets

really weird and complicated but i'm going to stick with my my theory here the uh the times through the order penalty would be diminished if not erased. All right. Yeah. And I'll say it costs you, I don't know, a handful of games a season or something. I believe there's value in scouting an opponent's weaknesses. If there's not, my goodness. There's so much wasted money. Yeah. All right.

And then last one from Mark. All the talk about different eras a couple episodes ago got me thinking. Is there an ideal era? I believe Mark is also a Patreon supporter, by the way. If 1968 was the year of the pitcher, if we are now in a high home run, three true outcome era, if the 90s and 2000s were a steroid ridden era, or at least another high offense era, then when were the best years? I suppose there's a deeper philosophical discussion here about what baseball should look like, but I'd be curious to see what a statistical breakdown of baseball's history would show as the middle ground. I suppose my question is, if we were to make baseball great again, when was baseball the greatest before?

For what it's worth, I like it fine right now. Yeah, I think it's right now. Really? I know I'm biased, but I think it's right now. Well, I mean, it's definitely better right now for reasons having to do with off the field. I mean, it's better in that it's better to consume. Now it's easier to follow. The writing is better. The stats are better. So all of that is better. And I wouldn't give up any of that. And it's better in the sense that the players are better. So you're probably seeing the highest caliber of baseball ever. of baseball ever. Stylistically, I don't know if it's the best. I don't know that it makes a meaningful difference, really, to how much people enjoy baseball, whether it's high offense or low offense or three true outcomes or not three true outcomes. I don't know. I don't know that it really affects our enjoyment all that much. You hear a lot from people that the 80s were the ideal

baseball era, and that could just be because a lot of the people who are kind of prominent baseball commentators today grew up with 80s baseball. And so they think it's the best, but there is an argument to be made there in that it was kind of a well-rounded game. There was a lot of speed, lots of steals. That's exciting. It was, you know, not a high home run era, but not like a year of the pitcher type era either. It was kind of like in the middle in a lot of ways, but also there were steals and exciting strategy in a sense. So I'm somewhat sympathetic to that argument, but I just don't know that it matters all that much. Yeah, right now. Yeah. Do you think right now just, I mean, is it because you don't think it matters that much,

or do you think there are things about the way baseball is played today that are actually more entertaining? Mostly I'm convinced by the fact that the players are better than ever. Now, maybe you could convince me because I don't know much about historical injury rates. If players were just more able to stay on the field, there's nothing I dislike in sports more than when players get hurt because I want teams to be able to use their talent. I want players to be able to stay on the field. It's one of the major reasons it's driven me away from football over the years. Everyone just gets injured at some point or worse. So if there were fewer players getting hurt or something, then maybe it would have been better before. But I don't know. I think that now you have players who care the most about what they do. Players least likely to

take a game or a playoff. They're just these like specifically purebred baseball playing machines, which can lead to people being super intense and unpleasant like Hunter Strickland, but also just leads to players being really, really great all of the time. So I am unconvinced that I would prefer another style of baseball. I would love it if baseball moved faster. I think a lot of us would. I do miss, I guess, sort of the pace I grew up with.

But outside of that, if I had to choose between an era I know or an era in the past that might have been better, I'm going to take the era with the more talented players. That's right now. All right. Yeah, I think I'm with you. I'd go 80s if not now, but I'm also fine with now. All right. So we will end there. Wanted to share this fun fact, by the way.

Speaking of our discussion about the Orioles and their pitiful pace this year, listener Asher in the Facebook group posted, 2018 Mike Trout to date, 6.5 baseball reference war. The entire Orioles to date, 3.2 baseball reference war. So Mike Trout by himself has basically been twice as valuable as the entire Orioles roster. There's some food for thought. You can support the podcast on Patreon, and we would love it if you would, by going to patreon.com slash effectivelywild. The following five listeners have already done so. Andrew Thompson, Kevin Reed, Paul Harmon, Randall Woodford, and Mike Carlucci.

Thanks to all of you. You can join our Facebook group at facebook.com slash groups slash Effectively Wild, and you can rate and review and subscribe to Effectively Wild on iTunes or many other services. Thanks to Dylan Higgins for his editing assistance. Please keep your questions and comments for me and Jeff coming via email at podcast at fangraphs.com or via the Patreon messaging system. If you're a supporter, we will be back with one more episode this week. So we will talk to you all soon. For hours Staring at a line of white powder My price I displeased the tab

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